Achievement Goals and Persistence in College Physical Activity Settings

Background/Purpose: In recent years researchers have begun to use the 2 x 2 achievement goal model to understand students' motivated behaviors in physical activity (PA) settings. But this model has not been extensively utilized to examine college students' achievement goals and motivated behaviors in PA settings. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine how college students' achievement goals might affect their self-reported persistence toward PA.

Method: A total of 260 (147 male, 113 female) college students served as participants in this study. They completed the 2 x 2 Achievement Goal and Persistence Questionnaire-Physical Education adapted from Guan, McBride, Xiang, and Bruene (2006). The 2 x 2 achievement goal questionnaire consists of 12 items reflecting four achievement goals: mastery-approach, performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery-avoidance. The persistence questionnaire includes 4 items. The format for all items is a 7-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true for me) through 7 (very true for me). The stem for all items is “In this class, my instructor…”.

Analysis/Results: Descriptive statistics of achievement goals revealed that students reported the highest value on mastery approach goals (M = 6.16, SD = .71), followed by mastery avoidance goals (M = 4.81, SD = 1.29), performance approach goals (M = 3.13, SD = 1.19), performance avoidance goals (M = 2.85, SD = 1.39). The multiple regression analysis revealed that performance approach goals (â = .25, t = 3.29, p <.01) and mastery approach goals (â = .13, t = 2.00, p <.05) were significantly positive predictors of students' self-reported persistence, whereas performance avoidance goals (â = -1.54, t = 2.06, p <.05) were the significantly negative predictor. Additionally, mastery avoidance goals (â = .11, t = 1.56, p = .12) were not significant predictor of students' self-reported persistence.

Conclusions: The research findings are generally consistent with the achievement goal literature that mastery approach and performance approach goals are positively related to students' self-reported persistence. Based on the findings, we advocate using the 2 x 2 model to further examine student motivation and achievement in college PA settings.